Hey Capcom Fans,

First off, you may or may not have noticed something… strange, with Scarlett’s picture. No, she hasn’t suddenly become a hideous Frankenstein-ish monstrosity. She is merely taking a well deserved vacation for a few weeks, and I, Lost, will be taking over for her in the meantime. I will try my best to fill her amazingly comfortably fitting high-heel shoes.

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My first order of business is to continue with the series of interviews with various members of the Capcom of Japan’s Translation Team, giving you a peek into the life of a translator at Capcom ground zero in Osaka. This week, we continue with the team that localized the recently released DS title: Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Justice For All, this time with JP Kellams.

Lost: Please tell us about yourself – name, where you grew up, languages spoken, interests, etc.

JP Kellams: I’m JP Kellams, JP being short for Jean Pierre. I was born in Indiana and lived there until I was 12, but I really consider my hometown to be Miami, Florida, as it is the place I spent the longest part of my life.

I’m half Venezuelan (don’t ask how I got stuck with a French name. =D) so I have always spoken Spanish at home, but Japanese came as kind of a whim. I’m a Gator from the University of Florida, where I learned Japanese under some great teachers.

As far as interests go… I have more interests than time, which can be a bit stressful. I try to play games every single day for at least an hour. Lately my game of choice has been Gran Turismo HD Concept on the PS3. I’ve gotten my Ferrari lap times up into the top 100 in the world! I haven’t been this obsessive over lap times since I was playing F-Zero back in the day! I also DJ (sometimes in clubs, but not lately), so I’m constantly listening to music – lately I’ve been on an electro-house/progressive house kick. Guys like D. Ramirez, Eric Prydz, Cedric Gervais, Sander Klinenberg, and Ferry Corsten.

I used to do quite a bit of mountain biking and kendo in college, but it is hard to find the time for things when you work on games 8-10 hours a day. Weekends are usually reserved for shopping and meeting up with friends in Osaka. I’ll go game shopping, recording shopping, and clothes shopping all in a day, and then go home and woe the damage I’ve done to my wallet. Ultimately though, I think I spend most of my free time watching TV, cooking dinner, and spending time at home with my girlfriend. Pretty normal I guess.

Lost: How did you come to be work for Capcom of Japan?

JP: I went to the University of Florida (GO GATORS!) originally planning to study graphics programming in a program at UF called Digital Arts and Sciences (one of the guys I went to school with wrote a 3D engine that got bought up by Tim Sweeny and company at EPIC) but I realized I was a substandard programmer. One night during a coffee induced haze of gaming and Vanessa Mae, I realized that my strengths were languages and design and that I wanted to move to Japan. The next semester I switched to Japanese and it has been a roller coaster ride ever since.

I went to study abroad at Kansai Gaidai here in Osaka, came back a year later on the JET program, and then through connections and luck got the opportunity to apply for Capcom. It has been a great ride ever since. (Interesting anecdote – The two people who interviewed for my job were Janet and I. She was so good that when the next opening came around, they didn’t look any further than her. We ended up working together on two projects in a row – Mega Man Battle Network 6 and Justice for All. Even though our team has expanded, we still manage to sit next to each other and bounce ideas around constantly.)

Lost: What is your favorite aspect of translation?

JP: Translation is interesting to me because it is a challenge. How do I make you like this character like a Japanese person likes this character? There is a hardcore contingent of Japanophiles that seemingly wants you to transliterate (not translate) everything verbatim from the Japanese. However, the original writers of the game scenarios are writing to their audience in ways only their audience can understand. Our job is to find a way to evoke similar emotions by writing to our audience in only a way our audience can understand. Basically, we have to make you feel like how someone who plays the game here in Japan would feel when playing. How we do that is by using our inherent cultural tools and knowledge to craft cultural equivalencies within the text.

Lost: How many years of Japanese have you studied? How many years does one need to be considered fluent?

JP: I’ve been studying Japanese since freshman year at UF, so that would make it 6 years now. I don’t suppose you ever actually stop studying Japanese, so it is hard for me to say how long it would take to be fluent. Better stated, the day you say you are fluent is the day you are no longer fluent.

Lost: What is the translation process? (ie: Do you play through the game first? Or do you get into a database and change the text directly in that?)

JP: Ideally we would have much more time to prepare for translation. But usually translating involves me just sitting in front of a computer with the text open and getting to work. I’ll have a ROM of the game handy if something doesn’t make sense or I need to check to make sure text works in context, but our teams do a good job of giving us everything we need to write a high quality translation from the start. Once I’m done writing, schedule permitting, I hand off the text for an edit pass before it gets put into the game, and then the game is checked a second or third time by the editor once all the text is in.

Lost: How long does the translation process take from beginning to end?

JP: Standard pace is about 10 pages a day. I did case 3 over the span of 2 months while working primarily on God Hand.

Lost: What is the most challenging part of the job?

JP: Getting it right. Making it funny. Taking it from being a rote translation to being something you actually want to read.

Lost: Are there jokes or phrases in the original Japanese text that just don’t translate to western culture/English? How do you handle that? Can you give us an example?

JP: Moe in the Japanese version of the game is basically a continuous string of cringe-inducing jokes only your grandpa would chuckle at – ridiculous puns, etc. that rely on crazy Japanese wordplay knowledge and washed up 80s and 90s comedians. None of it translates into English, so I had to rewrite all of his jokes and cultural references.

Case 3 is basically an ode to pop culture in Japanese and it comes across a similar way in the English. For instance, there is the “West Clownadelphia”-sequence. A lot of people took that as a reference to an Internet meme. In fact, watching way too much TV as a child is what inspired it. Well that and a 2000 Weezer concert in Fort Lauderdale, where the entire crowd busted out into an impromptu rendition of the original theme as they entered the concert hall… for absolutely no apparent reason. It seemed so random to me, that when it came time to come up with Moe’s random comments, it just clicked.

Lost: Conversely, what sorts of stuff do you add to give the Phoenix Wright dialogue a bit more of a Western flavor? Can you give an example of that?

JP: I’m a pop culture hound. Anything pop is just a thing of beauty to me. So I try to sneak in little pop culture references all over the place. Most of them in case 3 people have already discovered, but some are still a mystery.

Lost: What is your favorite aspect of Phoenix Wright?

JP: It is a great game to just run wild with. I couldn’t imagine writing some of the more insane lines in any other game. Characters are expected to say pretty much anything which means I can write pretty much anything. And to be able to put my own spin on an already exemplary script by Shu Takumi (Ace Attorney series creator and director) makes the process even more enjoyable.

Lost: What new features and highlights can fans expect in the Phoenix Wright: Justice for All sequel?

JP: I’m not much for feature rundowns. Game X has Y new weapons and Z new levels. It all looks great on the back of the box, but it isn’t what makes a game fun. What makes Phoenix Wright fun is that it is unlike almost any other game. Each game is its own self-contained little universe of witty storytelling and characters, and features, like the Psyche-Lock, all exist within this universe.

Phoenix Wright isn’t about saying “It is just like the first one, only now with a bigger law book!” The charm of Phoenix Wright is about telling a compelling story in each and every case. My mom started playing Justice for All without ever touching Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and called me to say how much she loved the world and the characters. (Of course, she is a bit biased!)

Lost: What are some TV shows or movies you have been watching lately?

JP: I absolutely love movies, not just for the narrative but for the technology involved in making them. I’m at the cinema almost every weekend watching films in 4K digital. 4K is absolutely amazing. It is 4096×2160 pixels with 36-bit color depth. For comparison, 1080P TVs are only 1/4 of that resolution with only 16-bit color (24-bit color on new models). Most theaters won’t have it for a few more years, but the theater near my apartment in Japan was one of the original test beds for the Digital Cinema Initiatives 4K platform and has the latest Sony SXRD 4K projector. They deliver the movies via the internet directly from the studios. The Departed and Casino Royale were an absolute blast to see in that sort of quality.

I am also a Blu-Ray fiend. I love the things… So lately I have been going through and re-buying movies I’d love to have again. I really love the Blu-Ray version of Black Hawk Down, and I can’t wait for Departed and Casino to come out in March.

On DVD, I pick up a stack everytime I am in the U.S. for business, and my last round was Clerks 2, Jackass 2, Band of Brothers, Talladega Nights, A Scanner Darkly, etc. Basically the big movies that won’t be out here for a while.

As for TV shows, it begins and ends with The Shield for me. Absolutely the best hour of television anywhere, and I can’t wait for season 6 to start in April. I’ve also been going back and watching through the Sopranos and House M.D. Hugh Laurie’s sarcasm is so much fun to watch.

Finally, I love to watch this hybrid Road Rules/Dating Game show on Japanese TV called Ainori. It is absolutely charming and almost entirely innocent. I’d love to see it hit the west, but only a network like MTV would adapt it, and it would end up a sleezy hook-up version of Road Rules. If you ever get the chance to watch Ainori, you should definitely take the chance.

Lost: Who is your favorite character in the Ace Attorney series and why?

JP: I’ll take Lawrence “Moe” Curls for the win. Other than the craziness in God Hand, I have never encountered a character that is so disproportionately insane in comparison to those around him. It means you can write almost anything and it still works. Moe may get players in a bind with his gags, but he is a joy to write for because you have so many possibilities.

Lost: Before Phoenix Wright, what other games had you worked on at Capcom?

JP: I worked as a translator on Viewtiful Joe Double Trouble, Viewtiful Joe Red Hot Rumble, Monster Hunter Freedom, Mega Man Battle Network 6, Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max and God Hand. I also helped with the testing of Lost Planet.

Lost: What are you working on now? (…if you’re allowed to say, that is!)

JP: I’m helping out with Devil May Cry 4 and also working on several unannounced projects that I am extremely excited about! Let’s just say that it is an absolutely wonderful time to be working at Capcom.